


Pathetic

by quantumoddity



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Juno Steel Needs a Hug, M/M, Masturbation, Other, Panic Attacks, Pining, Sad Juno Steel, Self-Destruction, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:35:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23501707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: My first fic for these guys!Juno Steel spends a lonely night in his apartment, wrestling his demons and dreaming of something better
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 7
Kudos: 58





	Pathetic

Juno Steel didn’t like the night. 

A strange thing for a PI to think, given that so much of his work took place in it, that he made use of it so much when he didn’t want to be seen or when he wanted to snoop around places he shouldn’t be. 

Maybe it wasn’t so accurate to say he didn’t like nights. Rather he didn’t like nights where he had nothing to do. When all there was to fill the time was to make futile attempts at sleep he didn’t want to need, wander his lonely, cramped apartment and be alone with his own thoughts. In other words, Juno’s own personal hell. 

It was a hot night, oppressively so, close and sticky and typical of a Martian summer. And, also typical, his crappy air conditioner wasn’t working. He’d slammed it with a frustrated fist and cussed it out but the thing had only blinked balefully at him and, as if in retribution, spat out even warmer air. 

“Fine,” Juno grumbled to no one in particular and went over to the window, having to wrestle with that too before it deigned to open with an especially nasty, rusty screech. 

He didn’t like to have the windows open. It let in the noise, the rabble from down below, the car horns and shouts and shitty music from shitty bars. Juno’s main goal was to always forget, as far as possible, that he was in Hyperion City. And it was damn hard to forget, when your nose was full of it’s exhaust and acrid fumes and your ears were full of two distant people screaming at each other about who even knew what. 

But it was marginally cooler with them open. Marginally. 

Juno hitched a leg over the windowsill, bare foot hitting the sharp metal of the fire escape that ran the height of the building like a hideously broken spine. He used it to lever himself and find a semi comfortable perch on the sill, slouching against the wall, half in and half out. Not something he could maintain for any length of time but he was in desperate need of air. And the smog the city had to offer would need to suffice. 

He was badly underdressed to be dangling out of a window but if anyone wanted to take issue with the fact that he was in full view of any upwardly turning eye wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, they were welcome to. He needed someone to yell at. Something other than his air conditioner, anyway. 

Juno let what meagre, damp breeze there was move the curls piled messily on top of his head. His hair was getting long, too long, but getting it cut was such a chore. Rita would do it if he asked though he knew that had the potential to go badly wrong. Five percent chance he came out looking decent, twenty percent chance she dyed his hair pink for the fun of it, seventy five percent chance he lost an ear. 

More than Juno needed a haircut, he needed a cigarette. But he was currently experiencing one of his fits of madness that led him to try and quit. He’d be damned before he let this crappy night have that victory too. He had to maintain control where he could, even if his fingers were shaking slightly and he was compulsively bouncing his leg. 

Juno ran through his mental list again. No ongoing cases. Nothing interesting in the police transmissions he’d had Rita hack and rewire to his comms ages ago. Nothing spooky or unexplainable in the news. Hell, not even anything good on the video feeds. 

In short, nothing to do. 

The thought made him sick. 

He didn’t do well without some kind of occupation. Feelings he didn’t want to feel and thoughts he didn’t want to think clamoured for every scrap of undivided attention and if they got too much of a grasp then...then he was screwed, basically. 

He could already feel the signs coming in, like the symptoms of a slow, degenerative illness. First every breath didn’t feel like enough, like he was actually forgetting how to breathe with each passing second. Then he would start to shake, nerves firing and muscles twitching when he hadn’t asked them to, with nowhere to put the energy they gave out. Other parts would go the opposite way, they’d go numb, his extremities prickling with pins and needles but unable to feel. Sweat would bead uncomfortably under his arms or on his forehead, though that one was already a given with the heat of the night. 

And then things would draw in, the walls pressing but also everything far beyond them, all moving in and crunching down like cheap tin, like the whole universe was trying to crush itself into Juno’s heart. 

He shook himself, pinching the bridge of his nose hard, muttering, “Stop it, stop it, stop it…” 

He was doing exactly what he needed to avoid, wallowing in it. Still muttering, he launched himself back into his dark apartment, staggering when his legs weren’t ready to listen to instructions yet though he managed to catch himself on the windowsill. A few strides took him into the kitchen and within seconds he had his hand around the half empty bottle of bourbon. At least there was that to be said for having a depressingly small apartment. You could never be that far from a drink. 

Juno didn’t bother with a glass, feeling the insides of the bottle slosh as he raised it and it carried that momentum straight down his throat. It burned in the best way, molten gold spreading through his chest, helping it expand and stand firm against the pressure of just...everything. 

Now he was swaying though it had nothing to do with his legs. Juno tried to do the math in his head, work out how much more he needed to drink to drown his dreams, how to walk the tightrope between the alcohol bringing him blissful oblivion and rendering him unable to get up for work in the morning. But the math was hard so he took another long pull. 

Then he was moving, bare feet slapping against the cheap plastic painted up to look like a wooden floor. Then the whole universe tipped on his axis and then he was in bed, the old springs squealing their protest as they took his weight. Devastatingly, the bottle slipped from his grasp as he did and thunked against the floor, the rest of that oblivion he desperately needed glugging sadly into an old shirt of his, staining it probably beyond redemption. 

“Ah shit…” Juno cursed, trying to grope for it while doing as little moving as possible, not trusting himself not to slip and spend another night on the floor. That would kill his bad back. 

He didn’t find the cool touch of glass under his fingers. He found paper. And he didn’t need to see it to know what it was. 

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Juno flew onto his knees then, snatching the paper up, not caring if he fell now. His voice sounded so small in the dark, empty space, like a child begging the universe to be kind, “Please, please, please…”

He held it to the one square of sickly yellow light above his bed, coming from a glow lamp outside. It was fine. No bourbon had touched it, the ink was dry and readable as ever, the hand it was written in perfect as when he’d first looked at it. He could still read the name, done in looping, exaggerated cursive. Peter Nureyev.

Juno exhaled a long, shaky sigh of relief, letting his forehead hit the wall, limbs feeling leaden as the last of the panic concentrated there before evaporating away. 

_ Pathetic,  _ he told himself,  _ after everything he did, clinging to his fucking goodbye-I-screwed-you-over note like it’s a god damn safety blanket.  _

And it was pathetic, he knew that. To have the parting glance of someone who’d stolen so many things from him as an anchor, to keep it and read it over and over again ‘for the case’, like that was fooling anyone. What case? Nureyev had fucked him good and not even in the way Juno had wanted him to. He’d probably never even see him again. What case was there?

But reading the words brought the memory of that cologne back into his nose, the spices from another planet, hell, another universe. They brought back that look he’d given him back at the Kanagawa’s, the look that had made him feel like he could do anything. It brought back the hope he’d been able to nurse for four fucking beautiful hours, that maybe he could have a partner, that he would feel a little less lonely. That someone saw him for more than he was. 

It had been a lie, of course, all of it. But the fading memories of a beautiful lie where all Juno had right now. 

And he was pathetic enough to cling to them until his fingers bled. 

Juno sank down into the pillow again, the letter in his hand, thumb running across the words. He was still thinking about that kiss. One of the best ones he’d ever had, for all it’s brevity and unkept promises. The way Nureyev’s lipstick had left a ghost on his mouth, the way his lips had parted after just the right amount of time, the way Juno had felt him moan, not just heard him, with his fingers resting so lightly at his throat. His sleek black hair had felt just as soft as it looked, under Juno’s other hand, and he’d wanted so badly to see it mussed up out of it’s perfect arrangement. 

How would it have happened? Would Nureyev have wanted to keep control, he seemed like being in control. Sure it had been a bitch when you were the guy’s mark but in bed...Juno didn’t think he’d mind. He pictured being pinned under him like a butterfly to a board, having his legs straddle his hips, having those perfectly manicured hands holding his wrists tight enough to leave marks. 

Outside of his dream, Juno was straining against the elastic of his boxers. He was hot all over, not just from the weather. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d rolled onto his back and his hand was down between his legs, holding himself through the thin cotton. 

Once that was done, it was a simple thing to slip under the fabric and feel his own skin. He was ridiculously hard, when had that happened? Even with the two good swallows of sour whiskey, he was standing straight as soon as he pushed down his boxers, springing free with an action that deserved it’s own goddamn comedy spring sound effect. 

_ Fine… _ the voice inside him sighed, resigned. It was better than a fucking panic attack. 

Juno’s own fingers were rough and clumsy but he was imagining slimmer ones, delicate, with hidden calluses you wouldn’t notice until the contact was this intimate. He was leaking enough pre to reduce any friction though he didn’t mind it a little rough. 

Would Nureyev be rough with him? Would he take what he wanted, would it be hard, snapping muscle and tension, a struggle? Juno didn’t know why but he thought- hoped maybe- that it might be sweeter than that. Maybe they could be equals, kissing heavily while their hands fumbled. Nureyev was so slight, it would be so easy to bring him close, to cover his body with Juno’s own. To have them be so tangled that suddenly there’d be no border between them. 

The groan tore out of Juno’s chest and he threw his arm over his face to muffle any sounds, the other arm working fast. 

But he’d be loud for Nureyev...he’d shout and scream and not give a damn, for once. And Nureyev would look at him as their bodies crashed together, he’d give him that look from before, the one that made Juno feel so, so  _ good. _

He came before he wanted to, shuddering and moaning the name under his breath. And then it was all gone, the fantasy shattered. Juno was lying in his own bed, sweating and panting, come sticking to his palm and dripping off his fingers. 

_ Pathetic.  _ It came harsh, like the crack of a whip this time and Juno actually flinched. 

He rolled onto his side and curled up small, letting the letter fall from his grasp over the edge of the bed, and tried not to feel the tears in his eyes. 

The city continued on outside, blaring loud through his windows, and Juno Steel shut down and hoped he wouldn’t dream. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please please consider leaving feedback for this, it is my first attempt for this fandom!


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